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Bad Critical Techniques
When you have any sort of following, on the internet or otherwise, you tend to become very adverse to criticism. In general, most criticism you get are trolls or an echo-chamber. And real, honest critics towards your work can seem exactly like one of those two groups. If they're harsh, it's easy to see them as a troll. If they're lenient, it's easy to see them as a part of the echo-chamber. Now there are certain ways to decide what's valid and what's invalid and here are some things that I've found will lead to destructive criticism. Keep in mind "everything you do is awesome!" is as much destructive criticism as "everything you do is crap." Keep in mind that this is very much a "do as I say, not as I do" journal, because I've learned a lot. Sometimes it takes people punching you in the face to realize that punching people in the face is wrong. But no (good) feedback should contain any of these "techniques." All of these are examples of destructive criticism. B.C.T. 1: "Nitpicking" - When the critic focuses on trivial details rather than the product as a whole, and uses that in place of an argument ''I started with the most common one, and the one that gets mislabeled the most often. Just because you find someone nitpicking does not make them a bad critic because "trivial detail" is subjective. All of the body horror in Ren Seeks Help can be seen as a trivial detail to some. For convenience sake, I'm going to define non-trivial detail as "something to which the quality of the whole product relies on." You know, things like plot holes, bad morals, etc. I italicized the last part for a very specific reason. It's easy to dismiss someone's valid claim because most of what they said had nothing to do with anything relevant. Taking something apart scene by scene opens the door very wide for nitpicking, and this only becomes a problem when those nitpicks are the substance of the critique. To avoid nitpicking, you need to understand, at least partially, how something works, or at the very least, separate facts from opinions. Honestly, watch the Nostalgia Critic's editorial "Is It Right to Nitpick" for full information about this one. There's just no enough time here. Also keep in mind that this is also treating small things as bigger than they really are. '''B.C.T. 2: "Cherry Picking"' - When the critic selects bits or pieces of a subject that supports their claim while conveniently ignoring the bits and pieces that contradict it. Let's start with the most common malicious negative criticism. Nitpicking can happen by accident to anyone. Cherry picking should only be done by politicians and propaganda mongers. The only way this happens accidently is if the critic in question hasn't paid very much attention to the work in question. In that case, they're not very good critics, are they? (We'll get to that though). A bare-bones minimal example: "Boris constantly beats the shit out of Tom. This episode is bad because of this fact." Anyone watching the episode can see the start when Tom completely ruined Boris' life. Politicians do this to make their arguments that someone else is bad or that they're good, and I can only assume that these "critics" do it for the same reason. These guys are clearly biased. I don't need to tell you that watching the source material is the way to avoid this technique, but you don't have to do this when you're the one who made the source material. Yes people have cherry picked in reviews they sent to me personally about my own work. B.C.T. 3: "Involving Personhood" - When the critic has more interest in the creator's success or failure rather then the product they are critiquing. Do as I say, not as I do, remember. Life has a learning curve. But honestly, this one is a little bit more tricky than you might think. Yes, the most obvious form of this one is direct insults. Another way is being biased towards the creator (read: echo-chamber) or against the creator (read: mindless hater). Another way is suggesting that the product in question should be abandoned completely so that the creator can move onto something else. This is not valid, and is on an equal level of talking about the creator personally. If you want to critique someone's work, critique their work. "They shouldn't have made it," is valid of course, but that can only be given to products that are actually finished. If ever a criticism seems to have more interest in the creator than the work at hand, then it's not valid towards the work at hand. "Michael Bay uses too many explosions" is not a criticism of Transformers. Do as I say, not as I do. But yes, I have trouble with this one. Learning experience, remember? B.C.T. 4: "Critiquing from Ignorance" - When the critic uses their lack of understanding as a criticism. "I don't get it" is not a valid criticism. What if the plot is too convoluted to be understood? Well, that's a little bit more in the middle ground. But if you don't know anything about fishing you shouldn't be critiquing a fishing documentary. This doesn't mean that you need to be a director to critique movies, but you should know why certain aspects of movies succeed or fail. This one is kind of obvious, but a lot of people know less than they think they do, which brings me to... B.C.T. 5: "Critiquing from platform" - When a critic claims that they have expertise in a field in place of an actual argument, especially if that claim is unsubstantiated. No offense to students, but this one often comes from college and high school students studying to be in some sort of field (in my case, usually animation). They talk as if they were already a professor, or at the very least they talk to their target as their professor talks to them. They think their argument has merit just because they're currently studying something. Does it have merit, though? Maybe. Are they a shit student? Do they have shit professors? Is it a shit college? Even if the answer to all of that is no, you're better off using actual arguments instead utilizing things you've learned, and if you're right your title or occupation should be irrelevant. There are exceptions, like if someone gets the details of an occupation dead-wrong, being in that occupation can help your claim, but they aren't as common as you think. You also have to keep in mind that I personally don't have a high opinion of formal education (unless you're going to be a scientist or a doctor or something that's less... experimental). B.C.T. 6: "Unsubstantiation" - When a critic refers to facts that they have not stated Speak of the devil, this one. It's also known as "being vague." Some examples. "This doesn't take any chances." "This is very stale." "The characters are too bland." These statements might be valid, but they're useless. They tell the creator nothing. Think of examples why the character are too bland. What are the chances they could take? How is it stale? B.C.T. 7: "Divergent Destination" - When a critic puts what they want in a work ahead of the work itself. This one is really weird, and it's easy to misinterpret. I mean, doesn't the critic want the work to be good? Ideally, yes. That's not what I mean. It's kind of like a more "benevolent" version of number 2. The critic attacks the work, because "it's not x, instead it's y" when both x ''and ''y are on a neutral level. The creator wanted this to be a serious plot, but the critic wanted it to be a comedy. The creator wanted this to be more whimsical or brutal, but the critic wanted it to be down to earth. The only exception here is when the critic wants it to be less cliche, for obvious reasons. A critic is allowed to want a work to be something else, but that should be less important than the actual criticism s/he gives. B.C.T. 8: "Unstated Assumption" - When the critic keeps referring to an opinion they have not stated, but expect the audience to share. It should go without saying that this episode is terrible, right? Um... no. No, it doesn't. The best criticism comes from trying to speak to those who do not agree with you. If you're curious, this technique here is the one that's most confused with trolling. People go on explaining how they would fix something, without explaining that they don't like or if they're neutral to it, or if they outright hate it. This also refers to the critic in question assuming that people share their opinion on another topic, like romance or comedies. Then they begin attacking the piece for its use of comedic tropes, without stating that they don't like comedies. It's not usually done intentionally, but it's still... not useful criticism. It's actually one of the most dangerous kinds. However, if there's anything valuable to get from this, you usually have to do the opposite of what the guy says: add more comedy tropes to make it more obvious that it's a comedy. B.C.T. 9: "Divergent Conclusion/Faulty Tower" - When the critic has sound logic, but reaches a bad conclusion/When the critic has sound logic, but starts with a bad premise. In the beginning of the review, the critic makes an incorrect statement about the work and builds many arguments on top of that incorrect statement. Each of these arguments are logically sound. On the flip-side, a critic has sound arguments about everything "Wrong" with the work, but reaches a different conclusion of the work than intended. If these things that the critic sees are negative aspects, the creator intended to see as positive aspects. Imagine a film that's supposed to invoke the feelings of disgust, and does so in bizarre ways. The critic picks up on those and doesn't realize that that was the intent. These two are two sides of the same coin, and result in the same thing: the critic and the creator having two different opinion on what the work actually is. The critic may think that the work is for adults, when the creator intended it for children (or vice-versa). The best way to avoid doing this is doing some goddamn research. B.C.T. 10: "Two Different Accuracies" - When the critic lambastes something that was intentionally inaccurate for its inaccuracy Creativity is weird, especially in the realm of performance. You have to know what your audience will expect. Does every car explode when caught on fire? No. Do horse hooves sound like two coconuts being clopped together? No. But a creator will intentionally do things this way, solely for the fact that that's what the audience expects. As you can imagine, this problem most comes up in historical fiction. Different age groups have a different set of facts in this regard. Depending on how old you are in the United States you've got a very different knowledge on Christopher Columbus, for example. The problem here is when the critic doesn't realize that the creator got a fact "wrong" for a sufficiently good reason. And these are just the most common examples of negative criticism that I've come across. Keep in mind that some of these come from very good intentions, but that's what paves the road to hell. Anyone can imagine that it's hard to be critiqued. I'm kind of a glass cannon myself in that regard, so let's make this as painless as possible. I'm not asking anyone to sugar-coat, in fact that'd probably be number 11 here, I'm just asking to create the most helpful criticism possible and doing any of these things will only result in a worse product. The thing about criticism is that the critic has to get on the same page as the creator before s/he can give sufficiently good criticism, and that's not easy to do. Not doing it though leads to assumptions, and not very good ones. The critic thinks s/he knows more than the creator and the creator thinks they're a troll or a pretentious twat and nothing gets better. And yeah, if I do this in the future feel free to call me out on it. I know what I did in the past. Learn from our mistakes, right? Category:Miscellaneous